Jericho
by ittykat
Summary: 7 snippets of a future with nothing but each other and a black box for company. Set between s1 and s2, written before the s2 premiere.


**Title:** Jericho

**Fandom:** Nikita

**Characters:** Nikita and Michael

**Rating:** PG-13, sexy times alluded to, but nothing graphic.

**Summary:** 7 snippets of a future with nothing but each other and a black box for company.

**Author's Notes:** This was originally part of a longer fic that got Jossed by the series return, and I can't see myself finishing it, as I like where the show took it anyway. I'm going to do NaDraWriMo, where I attempt to post a drabble a day on my LJ for the month of November, and some will be crossposted here as well, depending on length.

1.

They've been driving for hours now and the sun is peeking out from the east. The black box is between them in the console. Michael slips his hand into hers just after dawn and doesn't let go til they can't drive any longer.

2.

In a grey motel room in nowhere town Wisconsin, they patch each other up. They tally their bruises in silence. She caresses the angry purple marks the cuff left on his wrist, and gently kneads the stretched muscles in his shoulder back into place. In return, he holds her while she rests, propped up against his chest because her ribs can't stand the stress of lying down.

When the sun sets, he strips his clothes off and lies naked on the bathroom floor. She takes his lucky knife, straddles his stomach backwards and digs the tracker from his hip.

It's not the first time she's hurt him, but this time she patches him up and seals it with a kiss.

"I think it will scar." She says, regret in her voice.

He brushes a thumb against the thin scar on her hip. "I've had worse."

3.

They plant the tracker on a trucker the next day. Neither of them really believes Division will follow up on it, but it feels good to know that one last tangible connection to them is on its way to Texas.

4.

There are things they need.

Money. Weapons. Transport.

Money is easy. Division taught them the art of the con and the beauty of misdirection so well that it took both of them too long to realise they were being conned themselves. But it serves their purposes now, and they are good at it. The people they steal from will never know they've been robbed.

Transport is more risky. Any sort of public transport is out- too many opportunities for Birkhoff and Percy and whoever else to catch a glimpse of them, and while stealing a car is easy enough for the both of them, it does attract attention.

They sell Michael's car for cash and buy another sedan that's for sale on the side of the highway with the very same cheque. It's smaller, smells like sauerkraut and the radio is stuck programmed to the local country and western channel. Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson are their companions to the state line until reception fades and the white noise takes over. Neither of them mind the silence for the rest of the way.

Weapons are... tricky, but they've both been in the business long enough to have made contacts, and neither of them would've survived this long without being able to improvise. What they acquire is not ideal, but it'll be enough to tide them over until they figure out their game plan.

Most of all though, they need each other.

5.

They're both plagued by their dreams. She dreams of the future, and of Alex, and of What Ifs. He dreams of his family, and of Percy and Amanda.

They learn to comfort each other, how to ease the other into wakefulness and soothe away the tendrils of fear, until they retreat back into the dark shadowy recesses of their minds, ready to attack again when night falls and sleep overcomes them once more.

But one morning, they wake tangled in the sheets and each other. Michael confesses in a whisper that he had once had a dream like this. There is a soft, private smile in the way the corners of his lips twitch.

Nikita runs her hand slowly up his side, counting his ribs with firm fingers until her hand comes to rest above his heart. It thumps reliably beneath her palm, and she wraps herself more tightly around him, never wanting to let him go.

"This is better than any dream."

6.

Their honeymoon period doesn't last forever.

It's over the moment they plug the black box into a laptop and start sorting through fifty years of the government's dirty laundry. Some of the cases they were involved in directly, some of them they recognise from news reports. The ones they find most terrible are the ones that neither of them had ever even gotten a hint of a wind about.

She knows she made the right decision with the other boxes- if this ever made it out into the open, it could topple the government, crash economies, divide loyalties and sever truces. She is monumentally glad that Owen was never able to go through with his plan of releasing this information. She may want to end Division, but she wants the world recognisable by the time she's done.

"Where do we start?" She says, nursing a strong black coffee. "There is so much that needs to be made right."

Michael steals a fry from her plate and moves the screen a little to see it better. "We'll just have to do this the same way we do everything else." He says.

She quirks an eyebrow at him.

He feeds her a fry. "One at a time, until we win."

7.

They start with a corrupt politician, and anonymously upload the photos of him cavorting with his younger, male assistant to Wikileaks. They do it to test the waters, to see what the retaliation from Division (or Oversight) will be. Birkhoff trained them well and they can both hide their tracks online, but they do using the free wireless from a Starbucks and leave town immediately after.

A week later, the Senator resigns amid reports of corruption, wife standing stoically supportive behind him.

"Why do these women just stand there?" Nikita asks, as they watch the footage together on their hotel room's television. "It makes me sad, they have to put on the brave face, even though the person they thought they knew and loved has betrayed them all these years."

Michael shrugs because he doesn't have the answers, and he knows well enough that Nikita isn't _really_ asking about the repressed Senator's wife on the television screen.

She grabs the remote and switches to another channel. They'd seen all they needed to see.


End file.
